Memory
by Touch of Grey
Summary: Zachary Zatara collects memories. Eddie/Zat


Zachary Zatara collects memories.

Ever since he was a child, he's kept small mementoes of certain events in his life. He has pressed leaves from his trips to foreign lands, the map Minnie Mouse had signed for him at Disneyland when he was six, and books and books of photographs.

The photos of his cousin alone take up at least a dozen albums, and they now sit dusty on a shelf high in his hall closet. Once, she was his idol, but now, with the new age of magic making everything so, so, _bizarre_, the less he saw of her, the better. His family albums were still hidden, but they were stored in plain sight, on the same shelves as the books of tickets he'd collected from his shows. But the most worn of his photo albums, were those of his friends.

Technically, the pictures in the albums were more of his _teammates _than his friends; he'd certainly never said anything about being friends with Rose or Wonder Bitch, yet they were in there all the same. He and Robin had never been particularly close, even though they'd worked together on several occasions, so his image appeared maybe once throughout the entire book. Blue Beetle, Jaime, now he was an interesting fellow. He was one of the few people that could make Zat smile, rather than sneer. The book was peppered with photos of the boy, both candid and posed. Megan was another good egg, and all of her pictures showed her with a bright smile. Raven was much more reserved, and the single photograph he had showed the empath staring soulfully into the camera lens.

And then there was Eddie.

It seemed that every other picture in his books was once of Eddie, so Zat decided one day that he may as well collect them all into a single album. He had pictures of Eddie laughing with Beetle, training with Rose, a candid shot of Eddie getting his ass handed to him at DDR by Megan, pictures of Eddie gleefully accepting and trying out the holo-watch Cyborg had built for him. He had exactly two pictures of Eddie in his true human form, and they were from his half of a 4-strip photobooth picture. In those pictures, he and Eddie were smiling and laughing, the first showing Eddie making "rabbit ears" behind Zat's head, the next with Eddie having an actual conjured rabbit on his head, courtesy of Zatara. Further on in the book were pictures from Eddie's "Oh my god, we must take pictures together now that we are a couple!" phase. Like Halloween, when Eddie convinced him to dress up as a priest for the Titans/Outsiders/Anyone Who Was Once A Teen Hero And Can Make It To San Francisco party. Eddie then spent the entire night subtly molesting him in plain view of 50 people, which ended abruptly when Nightwing (who was apparently no stranger to the effects of alcohol) told Eddie that he wasn't molesting his boyfriend well enough and proceeded to "demonstrate" on Red Arrow. At that point, the party could have either broken up immediately or dissolved into some sort of super-orgy, had everyone in the room not been used to Nightwing's, erm, blatant sluttiness. Instead, the two men were ushered out of the room by Starfire, to whom Rose subtly slipped a camera. Needless to say, the infamous "Halloween Head" pictures (starring Nightwing and Red Arrow) made a rapid circuit around the female half of the super hero community. They were eventually lost when Connor Hawke confiscated them from Speedy. According to Mia, he kept them. Eddie complained for a week that he hadn't gotten to see them, before Zat distracted him with a "photo session" of their own. Those pictures were tucked away in their own special book, and hidden within one of his drawers.

There were several photos of their trip to Euro Disney, ending with a picture of himself slugging Fantasia Mickey for making some rather...unsavory comments about their relationship. They'd then spent several hours in Disney lockup until Megan, Rose, and Jaime (who were all in various states of hysteria) came and bailed them out. They are no longer welcome in Euro Disney, or any part of France, for that matter.

Then there were the photos and ticket stubs from the several times that Zat tried to bring a bit of culture into Eddie's life. Two art museums, a Sarah Brightman concert ("Dude, I know we're gay, but do we have to be _this_ gay?!"), and five different off-Broadway performances of Broadway shows. Eddie had liked Avenue Q ("Zat! This play is about _raunchy puppets_. Please tell me we're going!") and Movin' Out ("When did that song Captain Jack come out again? Because I'm pretty sure you couldn't talk about masturbation in a song prior to like, 1998 or something.") the best, but he'd absolutely _hated_ 42nd Street ("Can we go? Please? I will give you as much head as you can stand for the rest of _forever_ if we can leave in the next three seconds."). His own opinion of Phantom of the Opera was biased because of his preference for Sarah Brightman in the lead, but Eddie had seemed to enjoy it. Though Zat had to explain to him several times that it was _not_ a comedy, and it would be in his best interest to _shut the hell up_ before he got them kicked out. The stubs from the dozens of "movie dates" that they'd went on in secret were stapled in order of date across four pages, and a different memory was attached to each one.

They'd made out throughout pretty much all of _300_ and _Cloverfield_, and had only gone to see them in the first place because they were popular at the time. _Pulse_, _The Grudge 2, _and _Dead Silence_ had Eddie clutching his arm hard enough to bruise it on their way back to the Tower, and he'd brushed off the whispers and stares as easily as one would wipe crumbs from ones jacket. And then there were the Prom pictures.

The Titans had been requested to keep an eye on the Prom of a very private school in Los Angeles, whose senior class was made up of teen movie stars and the children of stars. The principal had said nothing about them having to actually come in _costume_. Or without dates, for that matter. So they had a rather nice set of Prom pictures from each of the Titans; himself and Eddie in their suits, Megan in her sky blue dress that went perfectly with Jaime's mentor's powder blue tux (it had been nearly eight years since that photo was taken, and Jaime _still_ hadn't lived down the tux), Cassie in red (not her best color) and Tim in black (he'd scowled the entire evening), and Ko in a radically ruffled purple dress that made her natural heavy-set voluptuousness even more apparent. He and Eddie had even made it into the school's final newsletter of the year for encouraging people to request old dances, like the Twist and the Electric Slide. And Apache. Oh lord, was that a trip. It was no surprise that Eddie had been a write-in candidate for prom queen, and despite multiple protests (all his), he won ("What?! I'm not the queen! Zat wears the skirt in this relationship! That guy! Right there! Quit laughing, Zat!"). Being a teen hero in those days had been hard, but it had also been fun, at times.

But those days were long over.

Zatara had retired from both the stage and the Shadowpact to freelance a few years back, after helping set Eddie free from the clutches of Neron. Eddie was training a new generation of Teen Titans, in the grand tradition of the "much abused older team leader" role. It was amusing to watch, but also reminded Zatara of all the reasons he never wanted children. Not that children would ever really be an option, unless they adopted. Glancing fondly at the gleaming silver (gold, they'd decided, clashed horribly with their respective super hero outfits) band around his ring finger, he put the worn photo albums back on their shelf, alongside his and Eddie's wedding book. Most of the pictures had been taken of Zatara, by Eddie himself, but the rest of the ceremony had been captured on film by Donna Troy as a wedding present. A quick look at his watch showed that his partner would be home in less than an hour, if no villains decided to hold the city hostage and traffic was good, and Zatara smiled.

Zachary Bloomberg-Zatara collects memories. It's not simply a hobby, but a way to preserve his personal history, and the histories of his friends and loved ones. He has done it since childhood and god willing, will continue for a good long while yet.

Fini

Yeah yeah, I know, the ending sucks. It's six am, I've been rambling my way through this fic since four, get off my back. This is fic, eight, I think, in my quest to become Queen of Eddie/Zat fanfics. So, how am I doing?


End file.
